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So you're cruising around the Internet and
you see a link to an article from some trusted

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news source and it's got a really intriguing
title, so you read it. And later you find

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out that that whole article was mostly false.
What you thought was news was really just

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gossip or conjecture. So we've got Ryan Holiday
here. He's a media manipulator and he explains

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how this happens.

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So, so what I quickly discovered was that
the media was this sort of hierarchy or chain.

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At the bottom you have small blogs who have
small readerships but correspondingly low

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threshold for what they will and will not
publish. Say this blog publishes a rumor then

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Business Insider or The Huffington Post or
Perez Hilton writes about. And now, because

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of the stature of those sites, it becomes
something that people are talking about on

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Twitter, on Facebook, on email, they're chattering
about it.

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And what happens is producers for CNN, producers
for a right wing talk radio, journalists for

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The New York Times -- where do they find out
the news? They're not out pounding the pavement

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like it's 100 years ago. No, they're reading
what people are chattering about online.

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And that cycle is hijacked by people like
me who say, "Okay, if this blog here has the

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power to accidently start a media firestorm
by what it publishes, I'm going to get them

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to publish something that benefits me."

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I, I've sent them fake anonymous emails and
watched as that turned into front page stories.

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The public isn't aware that this is how their
news is being made, but on both sides of the

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divide -- on the marketing side and on the
news side -- neither is particularly concerned

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with quality. They're concerned with what
will get attention.

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And that's because of how blog sites and news
sites make money. First, they get a lot of

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viewers to their pages. And then they sell
that view count to advertisers. So to get

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more views you do stuff like...

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Asking rhetorical untrue questions in a headline;
doing your fact checking after you've published

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an article; gossiping; speculating; making
up a story from whole cloth.

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But what if I want good, accurate news. I
mean, shouldn't news sites want to give that

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to me?

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Yeah, look, uh, I think the rule of thumb
is if you're not paying for it they don't

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give a shit about you. They're loyal to their
advertisers.

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If you aren't paying for it you aren't the
customer, you are really the product.